In Contention

Tag: Eddie Marsan

  • Revisiting ‘Naked’

    I’m pleased that at least one person correctly identified Tuesday’s mystery quote (despite my initial absentminded misquoting) as coming from Mike Leigh’s 1993 film “Naked,” a brilliant, bruising urban portrait that still stands, for this writer, as the auteur’s finest film to date. It won Leigh and lead actor David Thewlis richly deserved awards at Cannes, though unsurprisingly, its talkiness (the film is less a narrative than it is a series of ingeniously constructed conversations) and unrelenting pessimism never really caught fire with audiences, least of all Stateside.

    Incredibly, it is only this week that the film has been released on DVD in its home country – a move that, however overdue, at least cunningly coincides with the local DVD release of Leigh’s latest, “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Bringing them out simultaneously is a clever move, not least because the films complement and inform each other so nicely. Very much two sides of the same coin, the films examine the fragile moods and  tensions of middle-class London society through the eyes of two protagonists (dissolute bum Johnny in “Naked” and cheery schoolteacher Poppy in “Happy-Go-Lucky”) poles apart in terms of perspective and ideology.

    Watching the films together, as I did back in April (thanks to the wonder of VHS), puts into quite striking relief the changes (physical, political and sociological) that Britain and its capital have endured in the space of fifteen years. Some would say the contrast points to a change in Leigh himself, though I’m not so convinced – partly because “Happy-Go-Lucky” isn’t as optimistic in its worldview as the title suggests, and partly because “Naked” was preceded by the infinitely warmer and gentler “Life is Sweet,” the closest tonal match for the new film in Leigh’s oeuvre. Like any artist, the man’s moods don’t follow a regular arc.

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  • Patrick Goldstein falls for ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

    With “Happy-Go-Lucky” out on DVD today in my corner of the world, it’s odd to think that America has yet to discover its charms. Early Stateside rumblings, however, suggest that’s just what might happen, as Miramax’s marketing campaign goes out of its way to portray Mike Leigh’s unruly, bittersweet comedy as the cutest thing since newborn kittens.

    Meanwhile, advance press, like this preview from the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, plays right into their hands. Goldstein likes the film a great deal, going so far as to portray it as a lone ray of hope in a “calamitous year for specialty films.” Right off the bat, he dismisses the comic competition from the indie sector (“Synecdoche, New York” is “murky,” while “Hamlet 2” runs into into comic “dead ends,” apparently), before singing the praises of Leigh’s film:

    So now for the good news. After a four-year layoff since “Vera Drake,” which earned three Oscar nominations, Mike Leigh is back with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a film about an irrepressible free spirit named Poppy (played by Sally Hawkins) who manages to giddily bounce around London, full of life-affirming good cheer, but without an ounce of cloying or mawkish sentimentality. (After all, it’s still a Mike Leigh movie.)

    So far, so familiar. Anyone who hasn’t seen the film (and indeed, many who have) must be sick to death by now of hearing umpteen variations of the term “life-affirming” in connection with it. Refreshingly, however, Goldstein sees in the film the emotional depth and complexity which is so far escaping the general blogosphere, not to mention the Miramax marketing department (though that’s deliberate on their part):

    It being a Leigh film, the story is chock-full of oddball characters, from a high-strung flamenco instructor to a troubled child in the kindergarten class Polly teaches. But the best part of the film is the way it so casually allows us to grasp how intertwined each relationship can be. No one is easily stereotyped. Mike Leigh’s world, even a world dominated by a character who appears full of way-too-much unquenchable optimism, is always a world full of surprises.

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  • REVIEW: “Happy-Go-Lucky” (***)

    The common line in the British press so far on “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh’s alternately fascinating and frustrating new film, is that it’s a departure for him — an exuberant comic revelation following the spare, precise despair of “All or Nothing” and “Vera Drake.” How quickly we forget.

    Only nine years ago, Leigh gave us the similarly punctuated “Topsy-Turvy,” a period romp that in some moments rivalled “Shakespeare in Love” for broad music-hall humour. Even his biggest crossover hit, the 1996 Best Picture Oscar nominee “Secrets & Lies,” had a much more explicit comic tone than many seem to recall.

    However, the most accurate precedents for “Happy-Go-Lucky” date farther back still: the film is not so much a new direction for Leigh as a throwback to the gentle character-oriented comedy and wispy, free-form narrative of his breakthrough features “High Hopes” and “Life is Sweet.” It’s a welcome move. As immaculately crafted and performed as “Vera Drake” was, it didn’t, for me, play to Leigh’s strengths as a writer: his witty ear for vernacular language and his preoccupation with the tensions and absurdities inherent in everyday conversation.

    These qualities re-emerge with a vengeance in “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a film bursting with rapid-fire banter, cathartic outbursts and occasionally didactic speechifying. The inimitably fluid language of London’s multicultural, multi-class population is woven through the film’s every exchange; if Leigh could snag a Best Original Screenplay nomination for a film as comparatively underwritten as “Vera Drake,” it’s difficult to see him getting passed over for this.

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